Peace Walk Statement by Setsuko Thurlow

“Every Step of the Way”

Statement in support of the ‘Remembering Hiroshima’: 80 km for 80 years’ peace walk from Pugwash-Truro, September 15-21, 2025

I was excited to hear about the peace walk from Pugwash to Truro, beginning today and concluding on the United Nations International Day of Peace, and I am happy to provide this short statement of support and encouragement.  

You have chosen to walk for 80 kilometres to mark the 80 agonizing years of an atomic age that began with the destruction by one Bomb of my beloved hometown of Hiroshima, followed by a similar Hell unleashed on Nagasaki. I was thirteen, buried under rubble while hundreds of my schoolmates burned to death, many crying piteously for their mothers, their young lives stolen by weapons so absurdly destructive they threaten the very life of Mother Earth herself. Miraculously, a stranger reached and called out to me, urging me to crawl toward the light, to keep on moving. I emerged, into an Inferno, and began to walk my survivor’s journey. 

I am happy that you are reaching out at every stage of your walk to young people, for whom Hiroshima and Nagasaki can seem like ancient history, but who must be told the truth about what nuclear weapons are and can do, to bodies, to cities, to the climate, to the world. I also know that part of your message is directed at the government of my adopted country of Canada. My message is the same: Prime Minister Carney, the most important sign of peace you can make today is to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the TPNW, adopted by two-thirds of all UN states in 2017, on a bright summer day in New York I described as “the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.” And Prime Minister, the worst signal you could send would be to drag Canada into President Trump’s delusional ‘Golden Dome’ missile ‘defence’ programme, which would provide no defence at all but, at the cost of tens of billions of dollars that could be so much better spent, will only bring disaster closer. The only defence against nuclear war is nuclear disarmament: the only freedom from the threat is to abolish it. 

I commend the efforts of Voice of Women Nova Scotia, Peace Quest Cape Breton, and all those organizations and individuals, from across and far beyond Nova Scotia, involved in this bold and important initiative. I will be with you in spirit every step of the way: let us all keep moving, in all our different ways, away from the brink of nuclear annihilation and toward the light of peace on Earth. 

Setsuko Thurlow

Hiroshima Survivor, Recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)